As I mentioned last time in this space, it’s a strange time to be alive when an explanation of St. Thomas’ argument for the existence of God is attacked—by Catholics—as an assault on the Faith. But that is what I frequently found during the Natural Revelation discussion in November. On the central question—whether God exists and is Creator—I agree with the ID guys and not with atheists. I even made clear that I thought the basic intuition of some kind of design in nature was something that ID guys got right. So you’d think that whatever else may be the case, the argument I was making for God as Creator would, on the whole, be welcomed by the ID guys in my combox even though we disagree on details of how to argue for that. But in fact, I found that the other big pushback came, not only from atheists, but from advocates of ID, who displayed various levels of resistance to my points ranging from disappointment that I don’t buy ID to accusations that I am part of the Harlot Church foretold in the book of Revelation. (To his credit, ID advocate Mike Behe, who got cc’d by the “Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon” guy, repudiated this crazy fundamentalist nonsense as the faithful son of the Church he is. We have our differences, but Dr. Behe and I are both Catholics.)

Still and all, it was interesting that the general tenor of the ID arguments in the comboxes seemed to the express the notion that it was more important that I disagreed with ID than that we both affirmed that You Know Who is Creator. One reader really telegraphed the problem pretty well in an unexpected way: He charged that because I was talking about natural revelation (i.e, the very limited bits we can discern about God from looking around at stuff) I was somehow denying the need for any supernatural revelation at all—as though the God who reveals himself through what he has made has to contradict himself in his supernatural revelation to Israel and through Jesus Christ. Another person insisted that if I conceived of creation (as Thomas does) as having placed within it the ability to “roll out” (evolvere) its potentialities over time in a seamless act, I was somehow denying the very possibility of miracles. Basically the proposition seemed to be that I either accept the ID vision of a Tinkering God who is perpetually “interfering” with the normal course of nature in order to suddenly create a new species of cow or tyrannosaur or I have to just bag the whole idea of the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus. What both reader’s charges have in common is the assumption that nature is the opposite of supernature and therefore any time we encounter nature we are not encountering God.

Now if you think “Where nature is, God is not” then sure: every time you find out how a natural process works, you are (irrationally) declaring God exiled from that process. This seems to me to be the “kill or be killed” approach that both atheist materialists and ID guys assume. As Stephen Barr puts it succinctly:

[W]hereas the advance of science continually strengthens the broader and more traditional version of the design argument, the ID movement’s version is hostage to every advance in biological science. Science must fail for ID to succeed. In the famous “explanatory filter” of William A. Dembski, one finds “design” by eliminating “law” and “chance” as explanations. This, in effect, makes it a zero-sum game between God and nature. What nature does and science can explain is crossed off the list, and what remains is the evidence for God. This conception of design plays right into the hands of atheists, whose caricature of religion has always been that it is a substitute for the scientific understanding of nature.

But (following Thomas) I don’t think we have to assume that Zero Sum Game at all—precisely because Thomas does not appeal to exceptions to the Rules, but to the Rules themselves, as evidence that there is a Rulemaker, which everybody calls God. Funnily enough, one particularly desperate atheist in my combox, dimly intuiting that Thomas’ design argument was stronger than ID, reflexively tried to claim that the laws of physics are not consistent. He was, I think, making a garbled attempt to say that, for instance, water boils at lower temperature in higher elevations, therefore “laws have exceptions” therefore God the Logos behind nature does not exist. But, of course, all this really shows is that the physical laws are more complex than we might suppose and that it is the task of science to understand those laws, precisely so that we can predict the metric properties of nature. So it is not the case that different boiling points of water point to a lawless nature, but to a nature whose laws are more subtle than we may have thought. To deny that nature has laws in order to deny the existence of a Lawgiver is, in short, to deny that science itself is possible and to place ourselves back in a sort of Sumerian chaos of utterly unpredictable and irrational forces. Not a smart strategy for the apostle of Intellect, Reason and Science. Exactly where the sciences came from was the medieval Latin Christian conviction that the cosmos was a cosmos and not a chaos and that the unity of physical law was rooted in the unity of the Lawgiver who made it.

And Christians—and especially Catholic Christians of all people—should know that. It is the proud heritage of Latin Catholic Christendom and no other place and time that it gave birth to Science because of its conviction that the laws of Nature were, so to speak, the “habits of God”. Catholics should be the first to understand that Nature is the orderly creation of an orderly God who has invested it with the power to “roll out” its potential over time. They should be the first to assume that, within their proper sphere, the physical sciences have the same job as the mystery writer, not to solve the problem with “Then a miracle occurs and an angel points out the murderer!” but to make use of the physical evidence he has to come up with an explanation for the metric properties of time, space, matter and energy. As St. Albertus Magnus put it in De vegetabilibus et plantis:

“In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.”

And in his De mineralibus, he writes:

"It is the task of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of things."

This does not mean the physical sciences are competent to understand all of reality (what is the chemical composition of love? how do we detect the green fumes of human depravity, how much does beauty weigh?). Still less can the physical sciences make grand pronouncements about the existence or non-existence of God--or even of the number 4 (which likewise is composed of no matter nor energy and exists in neither time nor space). But it does mean that, as Thomas makes clear, we don’t need to set up a pointless conflict between the laws of Nature (and those tasked with learning about them) and the Lawgiver. Leave that fruitless endeavor to atheist materialists. Christians have nothing to fear from the physical sciences because the same God who made the world also redeemed it in Christ.

MARK: Send them to Stephen Meredith, “Looking for God in all the Wrong Places”, First Things, Feb. 2014, pp. 47-52. If they haven’t thrown Reason out, as Luther did, then the arguments there by one of the most distinguished neuroscientists/philosophers of the U. of Chicago will show them where they have gone off the rails, totally. If you are not aware of the paper I urge you to look at it now. They are undermining Causality, the fact of Privation, and have severed ID from Chritianity. They are closet Deists ala Thomas Jefferson in my view. I hope this is of interest to you and to your readers.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 7:17 PM (EST):

Stop praying for straw Thomists. Everybody knows that they use gold bricks in heaven.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 5:14 PM (EST):

Oh wait! What’s this?

The First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, (4: Denzinger 1816, 3041) states that, “...in divine revelation there are no true mysteries properly so called, but that all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles by a well trained mind.”

Oh wait!...I forgot to mention that that’s actually ANATHEMA and a sentence shall be declared AGAINST anyone who states that.

*oops!*

never mind

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:31 PM (EST):

“Natural revelation cleary tells us that ...spirits don’t exist.” Really? That probably comes as news to Plato (who essentially said nothing exists but spirits), Aristotle (who said spirits only potentially exist unless they’re the spirit OF something, and then they ipso facto have real existence)”

Yeah…like what Plato and Aristotle meant by ‘spirits’ were Angels and Demons. I’ll betcha Johnnie Walker and Jose Cuervo are big believers in ‘spirits’ also.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 12:58 PM (EST):

Sorry if I got too sour for a second. I was just trying to stir the pot to get something going on in here.

My only point is that using the profane to explain the sacred is a losing game. There’s a good reason why Christ crucified is “to the Greeks, foolishness.” (1 Cor 1:23)

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 10:28 AM (EST):

“Then make sure you actually know something about that topic. Only then will your offering your opinion produce anything other than your own embarrassment.”

So is the topic philosophy or God? If you say philosophy…you win. If you say God…you lose. If you say both…well…

I’d much rather be embarrassed by my own stupidity than profane the sacred with intellectual pride.

@Morrie. Tom’s background is amazingly impressive. Tom PROVED who God was by his own smarts. (I know…sounds Pelagian.)

Perhaps you would care to share that proof, Tom? Oh never mind. I’m sure we’re all too dumb to grasp your genius.

Posted by Morrie on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 8:55 AM (EST):

Tom,

Can you share a bit more of your background? Very impressive. I think I am now motivated to dive into Thomas. Very frustrating to watch you correct stinkin thinkin, the correction acknowledged, more stinkin thinkin erupts, more correction…

Posted by Tom in AZ on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 2:11 AM (EST):

@Craig Roberts and Howard: You both have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Natural “revelation”—more properly “natural theology”—most certainly is not “based on experience”, except in the sense that ALL concepts, including the most mystical doctrines of faith, are generalized from sense-experience. “Natural theology” is based purely on philosophical speculation, without reference to miraculous revelation. The same is true of math, and that can discuss multiple infinities and non-Euclidean geometries—which are in no way directly experienced by anyone, nor can they be.
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“Natural revelation cleary tells us that ...spirits don’t exist.” Really? That probably comes as news to Plato (who essentially said nothing exists but spirits), Aristotle (who said spirits only potentially exist unless they’re the spirit OF something, and then they ipso facto have real existence), Buddhists (who make an awful big deal out of their doctrine of “anatman”, “no-spirit”, for that to be the natural assumption of all mankind), to say nothing of all the various panpsychist, animist, and hylozoist systems of thought throughout the world, all of which litter the cosmos with more spirits than anyone really knows what to do with.
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It has become obvious that you have no idea what Mr. Shea is referring to when he says “natural revelation”. You are patting yourselves on the back for seeing through a claim NOBODY is making, while actually completely failing to grasp not only the actual line of argument in the article, but what the article is ABOUT in the first place. (A tip, for future reference: before offering comment on a piece of discourse, first make sure you know what topic it’s about. Then make sure you actually know something about that topic. Only then will your offering your opinion produce anything other than your own embarrassment.)

Posted by Tom in AZ on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:44 AM (EST):

@Craig Roberts: Notice that I said “@Ross”? I was referring to his claim that “Fear of God Gives Us The Desire Not to Offend God” was either self-contradictory, or contradicted by something here. I was asking him to explain that particular statement. I am WELL acquainted with the many paradoxes of Christian faith.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:22 AM (EST):

“Natural revelation” has its limits, yes, which means it must be silent on what goes beyond those limits.

Very well said.

“KISS was possible…but he could never be sure anyone would actually choose to make such a band.”

Could it be…...satan? JK! Thank you Howard! It’s so nice to have a response that is sincere, reflective, and relevant.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:10 AM (EST):

By ‘Greeks’ I was thinking of the whole philosophical tradition of trying to capture God without letting Him capture us.

Posted by Howard on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:09 AM (EST):

“Natural revelation” has its limits, yes, which means it must be silent on what goes beyond those limits. In the crude analogy I was making it could not have predicted Rock ‘n’ Roll, but Rock ‘n’ Roll does not CONTRADICT it, either. If we want to bring in the mere existence of God, that goes a bit beyond mere observations and involves the use of reason as well. Reason knows there is a God, but cannot find out much about Him. To twist my analogy in a different way, an observer in the 18th century might have known a band like KISS was possible (assuming electric guitars & such could be explained or accepted), but he could never be sure anyone would actually choose to make such a band.

Posted by Howard on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:04 AM (EST):

“You think the ancients had it better or worse?” Don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t willingly give up hot showers and toilet paper. But every age has its plusses and minuses. “Are we superior or inferior to the Israelites who learned that if you pick up sticks on the sabbath you could be stoned to death?” We are probably worse, because we have received more grace, but we behave no better. We still dance around our own versions of the golden calf. “Or the Greeks who thought that Christian “faith must always be irrational”?” Not all Greeks thought that. Besides, I suspect you are thinking mostly of Tertullian, who was not Greek.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 1:02 AM (EST):

“Natural revelation” is based on experience. “Natural revelation” would have told an observer of Western music that symphonies are exclusively orchestral…

Exactly…‘natural revelation’ would never be able to account for the existence of rock and roll.

Or a virgin birth…

Or a resurrection…

Or God.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 12:56 AM (EST):

“I’m afraid this is a symptom of our age…”

That sounds like ‘ageism’ to me. You think the ancients had it better or worse? Are we superior or inferior to the Israelites who learned that if you pick up sticks on the sabbath you could be stoned to death? Or the Greeks who thought that Christian “faith must always be irrational”?

Posted by Howard on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 12:52 AM (EST):

@Craig Roberts—“Natural revelation” is based on experience. “Natural revelation” would have told an observer of Western music that symphonies are exclusively orchestral. Everything that Mozart wrote would seem to confirm this. Everything that Haydn wrote would seem to confirm this. Everything that Beethoven wrote would seem to confirm this—until, in the last movement of his last symphony, he said, “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!” Just because an author voluntarily imposes upon himself a constraint for the sake of his art does not mean that he cannot violate that constraint for the sake of his art. What Beethoven did, God can do.

Posted by Howard on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 12:41 AM (EST):

I’m afraid this is a symptom of our age, an age in which it is generally believed that faith must always be irrational, that innocence is just a special case of ignorance, and that God is absolute potentiality, not absolute act.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Thursday, Jan, 16, 2014 12:35 AM (EST):

No takers?

*awkward*

What part of “foolishness to gentiles” do you not understand?

Posted by Craig Roberts on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 11:59 PM (EST):

“Unpack how that is contradictory, please.”

Two words…. virgin + birth

Posted by Tom in AZ on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 11:34 PM (EST):

@Ross: Unpack how that is contradictory, please. It also doesn’t appear to actually be a logical proposition at ALL (neither is “George Washington was of English descent” or “wolves generally eat mice during lean times”, “assertion” is not the same thing as “logical proposition”).
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But really before we let you sit at the grownups’ table you’re really going to have to knock off the potty-talk. Also, again, demonstrate that you’re aware there are fields of intellectual inquiry that are not physics, because as far as we can tell you’re trying to drive in screws with a hammer.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 11:34 PM (EST):

“...as though the God who reveals himself through what he has made has to contradict himself in his supernatural revelation to Israel and through Jesus Christ.”

Reeeeaaaaallllyyy? Where to start…?

God made snakes and donkeys…do they talk?

God made angels and demons…can we detect them?

God made man…can he rise from the dead?

To deny that there are contradictions between ‘natural’ and supernatural revelation is silly.

Clearly the universe is created, but ID supporters open their kids up to the lies of the devil and of “atheists” by going too far, e.g., saying the grand canyon was caused by the flood, the speed of light has changed, dinosaur bones are tricks, etc. As St, Augustine says, do not open the Faith to ridicule.

Posted by Ross on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 9:13 PM (EST):

You contradicted yourself in the headline “Fear of God Gives Us The Desire Not to Offend God”. Your “logic” is ridiculous, so you baffle with bullsh*t.

Posted by Linus2nd on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 8:11 PM (EST):

Yes indeed. I have run into the same problem, not in an I.D. context however. I was flabergasted to learn that there were Christians in the world who eschwed any philosophical reasoning to the existence of God on the grounds that this could not be the same God as the God of Christianity, that the True God could only be known through Faith. See my thread, The First Way Explained, on the Philosophy Forum at Catholic Answers.

Linus2nd

Posted by English Catholic on Wednesday, Jan, 15, 2014 5:25 PM (EST):

Edward Feser is excellent on the different between the ID argument, and the ‘Fifth Way’ expounded by St Thomas. His book The Last Superstition explains it very clearly. You’ll never be confused again. They really are completely, and fundamentally, different.

I really can’t recommend that book highly enough for anyone interested in debating atheists.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 9:20 PM (EST):

@dave: Here’s an idea—if you want something explained, ask to have it explained. Don’t use your ignorance as an excuse to make baseless accusations. Use of the terminology relevant to a controversy has absolutely no implications of agreement on the subject of the controversy. “ID” stands for “Intelligent Design”; the term is used on all sides of that (very, very contentious) debate, not just by “fellows” who are in “agreement”. “CC’d”, meanwhile, is NOT jargon; it’s a term everyone who has ever used email or, before that, an intra-office memo-system, should recognize (I just asked my 16-year-old brother, he knows what it means)—it stands for “carbon copy” and means a third party was forwarded a copy of a piece of correspondence.

Posted by dave on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 6:06 PM (EST):

It might be of help if you spoke English to those of us who are English speakers. I have no clue of what ID is or cc’d. You people who constantly speak in acronyms speak only to those who are already your “fellows” and are, therefor, already in agreement with you. If you are trying to persuade others to your peculiar mindset you might try speaking plainly.

Posted by Jon W on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 5:35 PM (EST):

Aquinas said all his philosophical theology was as straw compared to the direct experience of union with God that he was granted—but you can’t make bricks without straw, even the bricks of the City of God.

I like that.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 4:03 PM (EST):

Thanks Tom. That was very helpful.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 3:48 PM (EST):

@Craig Roberts: “Natural revelation” sounds NOTHING like the heresy of Pelagianism. Again, you are conflating “knowledge of a proposition that happens to be taught by the Church” with “salvation from hell”. Newsflash: even full knowledge of and agreement with the teachings of the Catholic Church, from any source, will not save ANYONE. This is not Islam nor Sola Fide Protestantism; you are not saved by accepting a proposition or a creed, but by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Incarnate God.
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By “know” God, “if it is something outside of salvation”, we mean have knowledge of propositions in theology. Those are in no way, shape, or form directly related to salvation, you need the actual practice of religion to acquire that. It’s like the difference between science and medicine—science forms the basis for sound medicine, but epidemiologists don’t cure diseases, doctors do. Theologians and priests are not the same thing; some priests happen to be theologians, like some priests happen to be cooks or doctors or astronomers.
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As for “who gets the glory and honor”, I don’t know, how about the sinless being that got himself tortured to death to save souls? I, in fact, know God by my own smarts and hard work—I am a purely intellectual re-vert, I PROVED the existence of God to myself PURELY by a process of reasoning. I take some minor pride in that, but it is on a level with my pride in being good at video games; compared to Christ Crucified it’s nothing. Aquinas said all his philosophical theology was as straw compared to the direct experience of union with God that he was granted—but you can’t make bricks without straw, even the bricks of the City of God.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 3:14 PM (EST):

@Tom
Amen brother! Thanks for the nice response. You obviously are very well educated and faithful to the Church. Perhaps you could help me sort out some of my ‘modernist’ misunderstandings.

First off, doesn’t ‘natural revelation’ (as presented here) sound just a bit too close for comfort to the heresy of Pelagianism?

Second, what do we mean by ‘know’ God if it is somehow outside of salvation? Just because I found a foot print does not mean I ‘know’ whose it is. And what good is it if the person turns out to be a stranger.

Finally, who gets all the glory and honor in our relationship with the Lord? Is anybody going to try to take credit for ‘knowing God’ by their own smarts and hard work?

Sorry if I was unable to phrase these in medieval scholastic Latin, but any help with the issues would be greatly appreciated!

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 3:07 PM (EST):

@Jon W: Agreed; as far as *this world* is concerned, you’ve got to be Catholic to get the benefits the Catholic Church provides *in this world*, which are efficacious for one’s salvation in the next. That doesn’t preclude God showing mercy to any soul he wants, nor does the possibility of him showing mercy to whomever he wants change the fact all salvation is only possible by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. (Simple justification for the stance that those who do not formally accept Catholicism can still, at least theoretically, be saved: who, exactly, would Christ have descended into Hell to save, during the Three Days? Dead Christians were pretty hard to come by at that point.)

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 3:04 PM (EST):

The truth will eventually come out that life cannot exist without God. We cannot and never will create life out of non-living materials. If we could, then everything we know about God could be shown wrong.
While the hand of God is apparent in creation and in creation’s design, it is most apparent in life itself. The further removed we are from the source of something, the harder it is to show cause-and-effect. Rather than argue too heavily about ID, maybe we could reserve judgment until the evidence for life itself is better studied.

Posted by Jon W on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 2:36 PM (EST):

you’ve got to be a member of [the Catholic Church] to be eligible for its benefits

Just let us make sure - since we’re into hair-splitting precision - that we don’t exclude the possibility of being mysteriously united to it in a way known only to God. I.e. we don’t pronounce and define that everyone not in full, visible communion is, ipso facto, destined for hell.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 2:30 PM (EST):

@Craig Roberts: One more thing. You seem to be confusing Christianity with Islam. It is not sufficient to merely announce “There is no God but God and Jesus of Nazareth is his Incarnation”. You can accept every proposition of the Catholic faith, down to the most hypothetical of Thomistic formulae or mystical visions, and not be in any sense whatsoever a Christian. The Catholic Church is an organization, you’ve got to be a member of it to be eligible for its benefits—and its benefits, the Sacraments, are the means by which it accomplishes the salvation of its members.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 2:20 PM (EST):

@Craig Roberts: RE: John 14:6, I’m sorry, I’m a hair-splitting precisian Thomist with a background in linguistics. “Nobody comes to the Father except through me” isn’t even “dynamically equivalent” to “the proposition of monotheism is not knowable save by scriptural revelation”. “Coming to the Father” refers to being worthy to draw near God, i.e. SALVATION. None are saved except through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but that’s not the same thing as “knowing there is a God”. There is NO proposition in theology acceptation of which is sufficient for salvation (are you a Lutheran or something?).
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As for whether faith is required…you are committing a fallacy known as “equivocation”. “Faith” has two senses, only one of which is spiritually relevant. Those two senses are “to grant assent to a proposition in the absence of logical proof, based on one’s evaluation of the reliability of its source”, and “reliance upon, trust in, fidelity to”. Only the latter is spiritually meaningful at all; the former is sometimes necessary, but only incidentally. We must place our TRUST in Christ and his Church; that doesn’t mean we’re forbidden from trying to find logical demonstration for as many propositions in that Church’s creed as we can.
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Aquinas actually thought faith in the sense of “assent to a proposition” was only necessary because of human limitations; he believed it was theoretically possible to arrive at all the truths of Catholic doctrine purely by reasoning. You’d just probably need far more time than the leisure and longevity of humanity provides—hence God in his mercy revealed truths directly by supernatural agency. Inability to work these things out for oneself is not bad enough to warrant the loss of salvation—that doesn’t change the fact it’d be good to be able to figure it out all on your own.
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As for whether God’s will has been disclosed in morals: do you believe morality is entirely relative and culturally determined? Because if you don’t, then you must admit that human societies are capable of correct knowledge of the moral law—and that those that correctly deduce moral propositions have, ipso facto, true knowledge of the will of God. The fact some of them dispute the content of the moral law is wholly immaterial—it just means some of them were WRONG. Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, and Brahe each had a different theory for the motion of celestial bodies—does that mean there was not a correct answer? Stop arguing like a Modernist.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 1:40 PM (EST):

“Has God’s will not been disclosed to his creatures when they determine that certain actions are bad and ought to be avoided?”

The average atheist might say, “If it’s the will of God that I NOT engage in (fill in your favorite sin here) why do I feel so compelled to do it? Did God mess up when He made me or when He made laws forbidding my favorite pastime? But of course God cannot ‘mess up’ so there must be no God because you can’t deny that there are a lot of things in this world that are messed up.”

So what’s a Christian to say? “We live in a fallen world”? They would reject the very notion because it smacks of Adam and Eve. And if God is sooo good why did he let the world fall?

So the answer to your question is no. God’s will is NOT ‘revealed’ by our subjective ethics and laws. All that is ‘revealed’ is our failure as a race to agree on and adhere to these laws.

Posted by Jon W on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 10:47 AM (EST):

Begone, foul Thomist with thy careful distinctions! lest the obtuse Dragon, by name Ignorantia Basicphilosophiae, be roused unto wrath and consume thee indifferently with the Fruityhippy.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 10:45 AM (EST):

“No one comes to the Father except through me.”* (John 14:6)

*Except for those super smart smarties that can work it out through natural reasoning.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 10:20 AM (EST):

@Tom
You can re-define ‘revelation’ to mean whatever you want. But as soon as you start saying ‘god’ in the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, you don’t sound any different than a run of the mill pantheist. You can’t blame atheist trolls for smelling something subjective about that entire argument.

“It is de fide that God is knowable by the human intellect unaided by miraculous intervention.” Is faith required? And is faith not a supernatural gift from God?

If not, it’s game over…atheists win. Just as “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26) so is ‘theology without faith’.

Posted by Jon W on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 9:27 AM (EST):

Ahhh. I love it when a Thomist lays the smack down.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 8:57 AM (EST):

@Craig Roberts: “By definition” “God’s disclosure of Himself and His will to His creatures” is supernatural? What if the disclosure is indirect, by the evidentiary power of, say, intrinsic cosmic order? Has God’s will not been disclosed to his creatures when they determine that certain actions—incest, say—are bad and ought to be avoided?
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It is de fide that God is knowable by the human intellect unaided by miraculous intervention. As it is in the intellect that man is the Image of God (Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 3, Article 1, Reply Objection 2), and the Imaging of God is obviously God’s will for humans (it is, indeed, entirely coterminous with God’s will for humans), we can conclude that not all disclosure of God to man is accomplished by supernatural or miraculous means. Therefore we can conclude that there can be such a thing as “natural revelation”.
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PS. The category that the works of the Angelic Doctor do not go in is not “revelation”, but “DE FIDE revelation that must be believed on pain of heresy”. There are many avowedly supernatural revelations that don’t go in that category—Lourdes, Fatima, etc. Scholastic philosophers prefer to let Thomas’ work stand on its own, without invoking the authority of the church to have it accepted—they having been the ones who formally identified the “ab auctoritate” fallacy, after all.

Posted by Michael Susce on Tuesday, Jan, 14, 2014 12:22 AM (EST):

Your article is consistent until the last paragraph. You quote Magnus as stating that natural science(actually this is a mis-translation.. it should be natural philosophy) inquires into the cause of things. Therefore, science can make pronouncements about God since we assert that God is the cause of all things. You go on to say that the physical sciences cannot tell us anything about God. But yet you appeal to natural theology which is knowledge of God via creation.
The beginning of the Catholic faith IS Creation. Any attempt to divorce God from creation and science is dangerous.
Anyway the debate is over, the mathematical probabilities of the big bang and billions of other mechanisms (just mentioning this reality shudders my soul)posited by Dr. Penrose are so enormous that only a God could have created it. If anyone here has not seen Father Spitzer’s video’s on science and God, he or she is lacking in understanding. He presents in simple (not simplistic) straightforward ways that the debate is over. Atheistic scientists are appealing to irrationality to avoid the conclusion of their findings. God Bless
Interestingly, your title which is similar to one of my favorite Thomistic statements i.e. that the word of God and Creation cannot contradict because they are both from the same source was not elaborated on. Maybe next time.

Posted by Craig Roberts on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 11:00 PM (EST):

Bonus question: How many parts of St. Thomas’ (pray for us) works have been declared ‘revelation’ by the Church?

Posted by Craig Roberts on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 10:42 PM (EST):

‘Natural revelation’ is an oxymoron.

By definition: ‘natural’ is NOT supernatural.

By definition: ‘revelation’ is ‘God’s disclosure of Himself and His will to His creatures’ and therefore supernatural.

So the atheists win. Logic dictates you can’t have it both ways.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 8:58 PM (EST):

@Ross: Pseudoscience? You are committing what the analytic philosophers call a category error. To describe theology as “pseudoscience” is precisely as stupid as describing politics as “pseudogardening”, or calling baseball “pseudoradiotelemetry”. It is actually an entirely different thing, it is trying for something else, judging one by whether it gets the results of the other is simply announcing you’re not capable of grasping that there is more than one idea in the universe.
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Get it through your head: theology is not TRYING to explain physical phenomena. Except very tangentially, physical phenomena are irrelevant to it. Are you capable of grasping that some things are not physics? Was Jean-Paul Sartre trying to do the same thing as Paul Dirac?

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 8:40 PM (EST):

@James Blum: He properly should’ve said Babylonian, I think, since he was probably referring to the primordial chaos before order was imposed by the gods, in Mesopotamian cosmology. Sumerian myth doesn’t talk much about that; it first comes to prominence in Mesopotamian thought in the Akkadian (Babylonian) “Enuma Elish”. In many versions of the idea, order is imposed on chaos (represented by Tiamat, the primordial embodiment of salt-water, thus the deep abyss of the sea) by Marduk, or whichever god is the tutelary of the Semitic-speaking group in question (Asshur in Assyria, for instance).
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The formula for describing divine order being imposed on primordial chaos is actually used in Genesis; “the deep” mentioned in Genesis 1:2 is “tehom” in Hebrew, which is cognate with Tiamat. Order is imposed on it by God just as the Babylonians had it done by Marduk, but without the anthropomorphic descriptions or heroic strivings (Marduk imposes order on chaos by literally fighting a literal monster), because the Jews conceived of their god as simultaneously ineffable and extremely ACTIVE, different from the very earthy gods of most myth, on the one hand, and from the almost purely abstract Supreme Being of most philosophy, on the other.

Posted by Jon W on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 8:30 PM (EST):

I take it back, Pavel. Ross’s crushing logic has destroyed my faith. We are all atheists, now.

Posted by Ross on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 8:18 PM (EST):

Defending St. Thomas’ writing against ID is a distraction. As long as you believe that the universe has a “designer” when there is no evidence, you’re just distinguishing between two sects of the same pseudoscience.

Posted by James Blum on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 7:13 PM (EST):

Why “Sumerian,” exactly? Because of all the various gods and demons in Mesopotamian myth and cult?

Posted by Jon W on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 2:09 PM (EST):

How about Jon W - is he designed?

Absolutely. I’m not an atheist, Pavel. I’m 100% Catholic. I just hate the ID arguments because I think they misrepresent the church’s position and bring us into unnecessary disrepute among unbelievers.

Posted by Pavel Chichikov on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 1:23 PM (EST):

How about Jon W - is he designed?

Posted by Jon W on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 12:12 PM (EST):

Does, say, a quartz crystal show evidence of being designed?

St Thomas: Yes.
ID: No.

Therein lies the problem.

Posted by Pavel Chichikov on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 11:45 AM (EST):

I’ve read perhaps three books on ID, and only one at all recently, so I’m not an expert in it. I fail to see any implication of the existence of God in anything I’ve read or therefor that God is a “tinkerer”.

All I’ve seen is that the information processes in evolution most resemble those which we know to be deliberately designed. It’s an inference, not an article of faith or even the validation of an hypothesis.

I find it interesting but not much to do with whatever faith life or experience I may have.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Monday, Jan, 13, 2014 2:53 AM (EST):

Saying you have to deny the lawfulness of nature to believe in miracles is like saying there’d be a lot more presidential pardons if America was an anarchy. It’s fundamentally confusing the very meaning of the words involved.

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Mark Shea

Mark P. Shea is a popular Catholic writer and speaker. The author of numerous books, his most recent work is The Work of Mercy (Servant) and The Heart of Catholic Prayer (Our Sunday Visitor). Mark contributes numerous articles to many magazines, including his popular column “Connecting the Dots” for the National Catholic Register. Mark is known nationally for his one minute “Words of Encouragement” on Catholic radio. He also maintains the Catholic and Enjoying It blog. He lives in Washington state with his wife, Janet, and their four sons.